"I Didn't Watch the Video of Tyre Nichols

[orleans]

"The daughter of a former Memphis cop explains why she didn’t view the latest traffic stop that became a death sentence—and why you may not want to either.

I didn’t watch the video footage of Memphis police fatally beating Tyre Nichols, and I won’t.

But like most everyone else on social media, I knew exactly when the footage was coming because city officials in my hometown of Memphis announced they were releasing it on the evening of January 27, some three weeks after five officers had punched, kicked, and billy clubbed the life out of Nichols—a young father, a taxpayer killed by municipal employees. Since the arrest of the officers, it had been impossible to escape the arc of the horrific story—the life of a vibrant, artistic, skateboard-loving young Black man extinguished brutally because a traffic stop became a death sentence. He could’ve been my son, nephew, or brother. And in a sense, he was.

In the days leading up to the video’s release, I tried to focus on Nichols’s life and not its gruesome ending. I watched and shared footage of him practicing skateboarding tricks and pictures the aspiring photographer snapped around Memphis, a city I left many years ago. Grief would sneak up on me with increasing intensity as if my soul was counting the hours until the video’s release, even if my mind refused to do so. I once caught myself before one of these squalls hit as my 15-year-old walked into my room. I could tell by his face that he saw the pain in mine. He said nothing, and I followed suit. What was there to say in that moment?

I came of age in the era of the police beating video, awash in footage and blow-by-blow analysis beginning with what happened to Rodney King in 1991. I wasn’t old enough to drive, but I was old enough to feel outraged. More cases inexorably followed as smartphones, dashcams, and bodycams documented cruelty beyond comprehension, the lens’s ubiquitous and merciless eye capturing it all like lynching postcards of the digital age. As numerous as these incidents were, they were a grim suggestion of the problem’s massive contours, hulking outside public view beneath opaque waters.

I turned all this over in my mind as the nation, if not the world, awaited the grisly Nichols footage with anticipation that, at times, evoked a blockbuster film or sporting event. The officers’ bodycams captured much of what happened, documentation they apparently treated with chilling disregard. The most comprehensive view, I’m told, came from a security camera a few blocks from his home. It had been installed by the Memphis Police Department in the interest of public safety, and plenty are around the city. It’s called SkyCop. Certainly, the video will be key to bringing these officers—five of whom face second-degree murder and other charges, including kidnapping —to justice. Nichols’s family members urged its release, seeking transparency since law enforcement agencies all too often bury facts and evidence. That the city released it relatively quickly rather than drag out the process is a good thing.

And yet, whether I—a private citizen, a Black woman, and the mother of three Black sons—should watch the video is a different matter altogether.

more at link
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/01/30/i-didnt-watch-the-video-of-tyre-nichols/

[Marcuse]

1. I've actively avoided it too. I'm not on the jury.

[efhmc]

2. As an old white woman, I could not and will not watch it. Just knowing about it is hideous.

I so want our country to be a place of justice and of kindness and of love but looks like it is not going to happen in the reminder of my life time.

[richdj25]

8. It's definitely your prerogative not

to watch that video. It's hideous and gut-wrenching. I watched it a couple of times and have cried everyday since. Like Emmett Till's mom wanted the world to see what was done to her son, I felt obligated to watch this beating, because Tyre is me and I am him.

America shouldn't turn its back on this but it will, until the next tragedy. Sandy Hook and Uvalde is proof of that.

Take care and have a beautiful evening.

[niyad]

13. It is possible to care without having nightmares from the visuals., and many

of us do.

[IcyPeas]

3. security camera ... was installed by the Memphis Police Department in the interest of public safety

How ironic is this?

...a security camera a few blocks from his home. It had been installed by the Memphis Police Department in the interest of public safety, and plenty are around the city. It’s called SkyCop.

[Cha]

4. Leta McCollough Seletzky writes

so vividly well.. my heart breaks for Tyre Nichols and his loved ones.

The Killing cops knew it was all being filmed.. what did they think was going to happen to them?!:

Thank you for this from one of the ones who doesn't want to see it.

[niyad]

5. I will not watch it for the same reason that I will not watch the beating of Paul

Pelosi, the murder of George Floyd, and countless others. It is the same reason that I do not watch ugly, violent movies. I have trouble with nightmares, and I don't need any more material.

Just reading these horrors makes me ill.

[Alice Kramden]

10. Same here

Exactly

[yellowdogintexas]

11. George Floyd was almost unavoidable but I can choose to avoid this one

and Paul Pelosi one too.

I just never will understand why this happens

[Demobrat]

12. Yes

Me too

[The Blue Flower]

6. Knowing it happened is bad enough

I don't need to have the visuals in my head.

[Ziggysmom]

7. I have not watched, reading descriptions of what he endured was enough of a trigger for my

anxiety. As a whole, people appear to be getting less and less empathetic. I see less respect for all life in society today. Definitely, I see much more hatred since trumpty dumpty became a leader of the malevolent, petulant GQP bootlickers.

[IronLionZion]

9. I'm interested in the why more than how.

Why did they beat that man to death?